EFI acquires Directsmile, gains edge in cross-media technologies
California-based EFI, a provider of digital printing innovations, on July 21, announced the acquisition of Directsmile, a provider of software solutions for cross-media marketing automation.
22 Jul 2014 | 2840 Views | By Rahul Kumar
Based in Berlin, Directsmile invented image personalisation in 2001 and today makes media personalisation and automation software that streamlines sophisticated marketing and production tasks for corporations, agencies and printing companies.
With the integration of Directsmile’s technologies, EFI will offer its customers expanded, fully-integrated capabilities with data-driven digital print, web, e-mail, social media and mobile marketing workflows.
Gabriel Matsliach, senior vice-president, EFI Productivity Software, said, “Web to print is one of the fastest-growing parts of the printing and marketing software segment. This acquisition gives us the ability to further address this segment with additional, best-in-class variable data and cross-media technologies. Directsmile’s customer base, which has a large proportion of agencies, corporate marketing departments and designers, is also highly complementary to EFI’s core client base, which opens the door to new growth opportunities.”
Earlier, Directsmile partnered with EFI on many projects to help customers bring more value to their variable data and cross-media marketing efforts. “Being a part of the EFI portfolio is a great opportunity to expose our technology to many more companies. Directsmile customers will be able to achieve higher levels of automated, targeted marketing success as well as gain important new efficiencies through integrations with EFI Fiery digital front ends, EFI Digital Storefront and other products,” said Christoph Schacht, co-founder, Directsmile.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and execution of the acquisition will be activated next year. Directsmile employees, including co-founders and former principals Christoph Schacht and Christoph Clermont, have joined EFI’s Productivity Software Web-to-Print Solutions Group.
EFI will continue to develop, sell and support Directsmile products as standalone software for the agency, enterprise and print industry markets. Directsmile’s technology also will be integrated into EFI’s web to print and eCommerce offerings, EFI Digital Storefront. EFI is currently incorporating the acquired company technology into a new variable data printing product that will make its debut at the Graph Expo tradeshow in Chicago from 28 September to 1 October.